Session 2A
- History of Deaf Education

2.1Introduction

The two sessions
covering deaf education will only scratch the surface of the historical
evolution of education for deaf children.For a fuller understanding, especially if you plan to write an assignment
on this topic, you should follow up the references, particularly the book by
Harlan Lane ‘When the Mind Hears’ and the account by McLoughlin on the History
of Deaf Education in England.

Before dipping in
to the history of deaf education it is important to contextualise the events
and particularly attitudes that make up this history.In many ways the history of deaf education reflects the social,
political and economic history in Britain in general.For example, when society was quick to judge social or biological
deviancy and medical research was still primitive and experimental, deaf
children were often victims of attempts to cure deafness or force speech.Similarly, during the decades when religious
philanthropy took care of the poor and the incapable, deaf children were looked
after in asylums by guardians of spiritual welfare.

Due to the short
amount of time given over to this summary, todays session will be fairly
descriptive.Rachel will consider
education in a slightly broader philosophical context the week after next.

2.2Up to the Seventeenth Century

It is impossible
to embark on a full summary of the way in which deaf people have been perceived
over the ages, however it is important to get an idea of the backdrop against
which the education of deaf people developed.

Traditionally the
Church, which was a very powerful institution, had propagated the belief that a
child’s deafness was a result of God punishing sinful parents.Consequently deaf people were excluded from
taking part in religious worship and their status as human beings was as
uneducatable and on a level with ‘imbeciles’.One of the consequences of having such a low status was that for many
years ‘deaf and dumb’ people were not allowed to make a will or to inherit
property from their families.

One thing you
will notice from todays summary is that, while it describes the evolution of
teaching philosophies, it is also punctuated by stories of notable individual
achievements.This is fairly typical of
the way in which the education of deaf children has been documented, but it
also highlights the fact that, in the absence of general educational provision,
landmarks in the field were often made by individuals, typically working alone.

Until the 17th
Century reports of deaf people being educated, or at least taught skills such
as reading, writing or speech were few and far between.One of the earliest documentations of speech
teaching was of a ‘deaf-mute’ who was taught to speak by the Bishop of
Hagulstad who later became known as St. John of Beverley (AD 674-735).There is speculation however as whether the
man he cured was actually deaf as well as dumb.The medical view at the time was that the inability to speak,
rather than being related to deafness was due to damage to the tongue.Perhaps because of this the Bishop of
Hagulstad’s achievements were considered miraculous and he was consequently
made a saint.

Often regarded as
the first teacher of the deaf and similarly considered somewhat of a miracle
worker at the time, Pedro Ponce De Leon (1529-84) was a Benedictine monk in
Spain who worked between 1550-1584.He
took students from the richer more educated people and tried to teach them to
speak Spanish, initially teaching them to write and then going on to teach them
to speak.As his work became more
widely known others started to bring their deaf children to him, and eventually
he was able to teach speech, reading, writing, calculation, prayer, Latin,
Greek and Italian.

One wider benefit
of this teaching was that some of the ingrained prejudice started to be
reversed.For example, lawyers were
able to argue in Court that a ‘deaf-mute’ who had learnt to speak was no longer
a ‘deaf-mute’ and should be allowed to inherit family property.Medical opinion consequently concluded that
those ‘deaf-mutes’ who could be taught to speak represented a special type of
‘deaf-mute’ whose tongues were not damaged!

2.3Seventeenth Century

During the 17th
Century, theories and methodology became more diverse, however this period
witnessed several of the most significant achievements.

Juan Martin Bonet
who worked until about 1620 is credited with the creation of the one handed
alphabet.The story goes that Bonet was
himself not a teacher but a soldier and politician, whose friendship with a
powerful family and their deaf son, led him to be involved in educating deaf
children.He published a book entitled
‘Simplification of the Letters of the Alphabet and Method of Teaching Deaf
Mutes to Speak’ (1620).In his book
Bonet sets out his belief that deaf pupils should be taught the one handed
manual alphabet, followed by articulation and only then, speaking and
eventually reading and writing.His one
handed alphabet is directly related to the ones in use in other countries
today.

Without doubt many
of the initiatives which initially took place in Spain spread throughout Europe
in the 17th Century.In the first part
of the 17th Century initiatives towards setting up a deaf school were generally
unsuccessful.For example John Bulwer
(1644), a philosopher, having observed two deaf men having an argument in sign
language believed that there was a place for sign language as well as for
lip-reading.However, with little
experience in teaching and limited finances his attempts to set up an Academy
for deaf people were unsuccessful.Nevertheless, his book ‘Chirologia: or the Natural Language of the
Hands’ was published in 1644 and makes reference to the work of his
contemporaries abroad, for example, Bonet.

In Britain the
manual alphabet was being developed around this time.John Wallis (1616-1703), a clergyman wrote a book detailing a
scientific analysis of speech and outlining his belief that it was possible to
teach deaf people to speak by helping them to use a different part of mouth to
create the different sound of letters.Wallis suggested more structured approaches with the building of
vocabulary and then formal grammar teaching.He notably argued for the use of signs and fingerspelling in the pursuit
of the goal of speech.

2.4Eighteenth Century

The first formal
schools for the deaf appeared in the eighteenth Century in France, Germany and
England .

In France, the
Abbé de L'Épée (1712-1789) had opened a deaf school for deaf children from all
backgrounds.He first taught speech
with gestures and writing, later concentrating on teaching and due to the large
numbers of poor deaf children, developed a less time-consuming system of
signs.Essentially, he developed Signed
French which became known as the ‘silent education’ of deaf children.

In Germany,
L'Épée 's methods were heavily criticised by Samuel Heinicke (1729-90) who in
contrast had founded the first completely oral school, greatly influenced by
the work of a German writer, Konrad Amman (‘The Speaking Deaf’).He insisted that speech was the only thing
that separated human beings from the animals.His approach became known as the German method.

In Britain,
initiatives were less systematic.Five
years after L'Épée had opened his school, the first deaf school was opened in
Britain by Thomas Braidwood (1715-1806).The school was in Edinburgh and in 1760 initially accepted one deaf
pupil.Braidwood’s success in teaching
speech to this boy led to numbers increasing to twenty pupils by 1780.His approach, due to the use of natural
gesture, was known as ‘combined’ rather than being the pure oralism used
elsewhere in Germany and most parts of Europe.Many visitors were impressed by the school and Braidwood’s reputation
was widespread.

The Braidwood
family in many ways represented deaf education for nearly half a century,
however Thomas Braidwood was keen to keep his precise teaching methods secret,
allegedly to avoid competition.The
school in Edinburgh was eventually closed and Braidwood opened a new school in
London in 1783.This school became
known as Old Kent Road Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, with Braidwood’s nephew,
Watson becoming the new Head.Three
years after Thomas Braidwood’s death, Watson, published a book ‘Instruction of
the Deaf and Dumb’(1809) which described their methods of education.

2.5Nineteenth Century

Developments in
America began in 1817 with the founding of the American School for the Deaf in
Hartford, Connecticut, by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet.The story goes that Gallaudet was engaged to a deaf girl called
Alice Cogswell.With no knowledge of
the methods used to teach deaf people, Gallaudet had been sent to England to
study the Braidwood method.Braidwood
however insisted that he enrol in a three year apprenticeship, a situation
which many believed provided Braidwood with cheap labour.

While in Britain,
Gallaudet met the visiting Abbé Sicard, Head of the Paris school and rather
than stay in Britain for three years, Gallaudet was invited to Paris to learn
the manual method.On his return to
America he took a deaf ex student of the Paris school, Laurent Clerc with him
to teach.This began what was one of
the main traditions of American deaf education - signing and deaf
teachers.If Braidwood had co-operated
with Gallaudet, the Americans might well have now been using the two handed
alphabet!As a consequence, the manual
tradition in America unlike Europe was quite strong

By 1870, 22
schools were open, many set up by members of the Braidwood family.The asylums were a charitable concern,
founded by private benevolence and public donations and combined the need to
encourage intellectual development, religious instruction and material
well-being.Most were family-run, with
the father as head, mother as matron and the children involved in some
way.The head teacher often lived in
the school, and the children were mostly boarders.As far as teaching methods were concerned a combined approach was
often favoured as a compromise to the increasingly polarised manual/oral
methods in existence in different parts of Europe.Certainly Louis du Puget, Head of a deaf school in Birmingham in
1825 was a supporter of the Paris School and its methods.

The number of
Schools grew quickly during the 19th Century.However many were essentially Institutions or Asylums homing many of the
poorer deaf children.Conditions were
often overcrowded and dirty, and the children were rarely allowed out.Many of the Institutions were attached to
missions for the adult deaf which existed under the control of the
Missioner.While relations were close
between the Missions and the Schools, the use of manual language
flourished.However, concerns had
already surfaced as to the actual standard of education within many of the
institutions.Often the headteachers
were in office for 30 or 40 years and typically had not adapted teaching
methods during that time.In London in
1877, a conference of head teachers of deaf schools decided that wider reforms
for such teaching institutions were necessary.

Towards the end
of the 19th Century, day classes were being opened, initially in London and
soon, in many other cities.By 1880,
577 deaf children were being educated in day classes which over the following
ten years saw increasing numbers in London, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham,
Bradford, Bristol, Leicester and Oldham. In 1893, an Act was passed stating
that every deaf child between the age of seven and sixteen should receive
education.This meant many local day
schools were established.

In terms of
methods of instruction, particularly as travel abroad became easier, knowledge
and awareness increased among certain groups, for example the more educated
parents.In London in 1872 a school and
training college had been set up by a group of parents who had witnessed the
oral education of deaf children in Germany and wanted the same results for
their children.This initiative marked
the beginning of BATOD, now the teacher training organisation in Britain,
essentially a teachers group advocating teaching using the oral method.

One of the most
profound influences on the style of education of deaf children was the famous
Milan conference in 1880, in which it was decided that schools for the deaf
should ban the use of all sign language in favour of an oral approach.It was thought that the huge impact of the
congress in Milan was partly a result of the organisation of the conference
i.e. the exclusion of deaf people in voting, and the imbalance in the English
and American members access to Italian, and also due to the need for change of
some sort.

Excerpts from Harlan Lane ‘When the Mind
Hears’

(pp.376) Incredible as it may seem,
it took only a small clique of hearing educators and businessmen, late in the
last century, to release a tidal wave of oralism theat swept over Western
Europe, drowning all its signing communities.

(pp.387-388)...The meeting was
conceived and conducted as a brief rally by and for opponents of manual
language.Setting aside the speeches of
welcome and adieu, and the excursions and visits, we find that the Milan
conference amounted to two dozen hours in which three or four oralists
reassured the rest of the rightness of their actions in the face of troubling
evidence to the contrary.Nevertheless
the meeting at Milan was the single most critical event in driving the language
of the deaf beneath the surface; it is the single most important cause - more
important than hearing loss - of the limited educational achievements of
today’s deaf men and women...

...(a report circulated in
preparation for the conference states...) the advantage of articulation
training ...is that it restores the deaf mute to society, allows moral and
intellectual development, and proves useful in employment.Moreover, it permits communication with the
illiterate, facilitates the acquisition and use of ideas, it is better for the
lungs, has more precision than sign, makes the pupil the equal of his hearing
counterparts, allows spontaneous, rapid, sure and complete expression of
thought, and humanises the user.Manually taught children are defiant and corruptible.This arises from the disadvantages of sign
langauges...

While there is a
suggestion that changes towards strict oralism were already on the way in
Britain, the conference certainly acted as a catalyst.The Royal Commission, set up in 1885 was
very much in favour of the decision to adopt oralism across Europe, confirmed
in the Government Act of 1889.

Schools in
Britain and elsewhere using manual methods at the time were heavily
criticised.This was partly because of
the living conditions which along with the staff had often remained unchanged
for decades and also because academic achievements were poor in those
schools.

2.6Summary

So, traditionally
while deafness was seen to be a curse, the status of deaf people was broadly,
uneducatable.Initiatives tended to be
carried out byindividuals with
exceptional dedication, and the children concerned were most often from
exceptional backgrounds.

Arguably the most
notable happening in the 17th Century was the creation, by Juan Bonet in
France, of the one handed alphabet, still in use in an adapted form today.Formal schooling, however had not yet been
established.

The eighteenth
Century witnessed the first schools in Europe.In France, the Abbé de L'Épée developed the ‘silent’ sign based
education system.Concurrently in
Germany, Samuel Heinicke,in contrast
had founded the first completely oral school.

In Britain, the
eighteenth Century can be identified as the Braidwood dynastyafter the Braidwood family who dominated
education, practising the combined method of communication for many
decades.During the nineteenth Century,
education for deaf children was initially in Institutions or Asylums and
motivated more by religious philanthropy than sound educational goals.

The growth in
more formal schools led to recognition that haphazard and under-resourced
teaching was leading to unacceptably poor results.Although attitudes were beginning to turn towards oralist
methods, the Milan Conference of 1880 provided a somewhat dramatic opportunity
to launch an era of oral education.